Provenance
Sadie Coles HQ, London
Catalogue Essay
Rudolf Stingel’s wallpaper paintings are, on first appearance, pure aesthetic pleasure. Luxurious gold and baroque elegance oozes from the pattern, drawing us in with arresting awe. A gilded artifice, the canvas is like a window to a bygone era of decadence: at once a static wall, on second look a dynamic surface with myriad reflections and inflections. Through the appropriation of an original damask pattern, gold enamel has been applied to the monochrome canvas. Its subsequent removal has left its deep residue and varying trace upon the surface. What might once have been a Minimalist monochrome painting has been transformed into a layered baroque composition with all the imperfections brought about by chance. Stingel toys with our expectations of not only ‘painting’ and ‘paint’ but also of the role of the ‘painter’ as well – the artist maintains his autonomy in the process of creation. In Stingel’s 2007 mid-career retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the artist created a complete environment out of a glowing, all-encompassing foil-lined atrium. Yet what appeared to be a display of elite grandeur and luxury, was quickly reversed as visitors touched and scratched the walls, so collaborating in the work’s process. Influenced by his Italian roots and Arte Povera, Stingel’s work is dedicated to the dislocation of our expectations of painting. Stingel’s wallpaper paintings remain at once democratic and decadent – a ready-made pattern transformed into high art. Untitled, 2004, recalls Yves Klein’s MG 20, in which Klein too adds dynamism to the layers and texture of the gold on the canvas in the mottled shadows and inflections. Covering their canvases entirely, Klein and Stingel create alchemical surfaces. Yet Stingel’s work goes a step further in its incorporation of figuration. Indeed, Francesco Bonami identifies a link between Gerhard Richter’s photorealist works and Abstraktes Bilds and Stingel’s practice: where Richter collapses the gap between figuration and abstraction, Stingel develops this in the perfect conjunction of both. Stingel’s wallpaper paintings are the site of layers of art history’s deepest dialogues. In the way they interact with a presumed history of painting, the surrounding architecture and the very surface on which the artist works, these paintings become, in the words of one critic, “no longer extensions or accumulations on the wall; rather they are artificial slivers of time existing somewhere outside of the viewers’ own” (Gary Murayari, ‘Rudolf Stingel: Moving Pictures’, Flash Art, no. 262, October 2008). The present work is an astonishing example of Stingel’s ability and willingness to engage with today’s concerns with painting through the unexpected medium of beauty.
Artist Biography
Rudolf Stingel
Italian • 1956
Rudolf Stingel came to prominence in the late 1980s for his insistence on the conceptual act of painting in a context in which it had been famously declared dead. Despite the prevailing minimalist and conceptual narrative of the time, the Italian-born artist sought to confront the fundamental aspirations and failures of Modernist painting through the very medium of painting itself. While his works do not always conform to the traditional definitions of painting, their attention to surface, space, color and image provide new and expanded ways of thinking about the process and "idea" of painting. Central to his multifarious and prolific oeuvre is an examination of the passage of time and the probing of the fundamental questions of authenticity, meaning, hierarchy, authorship and context by dislocating painting both internally and in time and space. Stingel is best known for his wall-to-wall installations, constructed of fabric or malleable Celotex sheets, as well as his seemingly more traditional oil-on-canvas paintings.
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5

Rudolf Stingel

Untitled

2004
Oil and enamel on canvas.
240 × 194 cm (94 1/2 × 76 3/8 in).
Signed and dated ‘Stingel 2004’ on the reverse.

Estimate
£450,000 - 650,000 ‡♠

Sold for £505,250

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

16 February 2012
London

1
This lot is no longer available.
2
Joe Bradley
Killroy
Estimate £30,000 - 40,000
Sold for £49,250
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3
Kelley Walker
Untitled
Estimate £50,000 - 70,000
Sold for £85,250
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4
Christopher Wool
Untitled
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000
Sold for £169,250
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5
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate £450,000 - 650,000 ‡♠
Sold for £505,250
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6
Marc Quinn
The Golden Column (Microcosmos)
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡♠
Sold for £289,250
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7
Cindy Sherman
Untitled #410
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £433,250
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8
Ugo Rondinone
VIERZEHNTEROKTOBERZWEITAUSENDUNDNULL
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000
Sold for £157,250
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9
Takashi Murakami
Troll’s Umbrella
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £385,250
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10
Thomas Schütte
Gelber Hund
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ♠
Sold for £241,250
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11
Isa Genzken
Dubai
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ♠
Sold for £61,250
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12
Andy Warhol
Mao
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ‡
Sold for £457,250
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13
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14
George Condo
Woman in Blue Chair
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £205,250
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15
Damien Hirst
Wretched War
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16
Andreas Gursky
Jumeirah Palm
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ♠
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17
Lucio Fontana
Concetto spaziale, Attese
Estimate £1,000,000 - 1,500,000 ‡♠
Sold for £1,049,250
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18
Roni Horn
When Dickinson Shut Her Eyes, no. 1259
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000
Sold for £121,250
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19
Richard Prince
My Funny Valentine
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000
Sold for £181,250
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20
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (HALF-EATEN)
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000
Sold for £181,250
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21
Ahmed Alsoudani
Untitled
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £229,250
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22
Walead Beshty
FedEx® Kraft Box© 2005: FedEx Standard Overnight Los Angeles–New York, trk# 8675 2590 1103; FedEx Standard Overnight New York–Washington, trk# 8631 3319 4523, date April 13–14 2009; FedEx Standard Overnight Washington–Miami, trk# 7950 0886 1541, date July 26–27 2011; International Priority Miami–London, trk # 8439 1188 5383, date January 11–13, 2012
Estimate £15,000 - 20,000 ‡♠
Sold for £58,850
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23
John Armleder
Alchemilla Vulgaris
Estimate £40,000 - 60,000 ‡
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24
Damien Hirst
Sensation
Estimate £350,000 - 450,000 ‡♠
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25
Alex Katz
Ada on Green
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000
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26
Olafur Eliasson
The Path Series
Estimate £50,000 - 70,000 ‡♠
Sold for £68,450
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27
Raymond Pettibon
Untitled (The view from beyond the breakers)
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000
Sold for £157,250
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Contemporary Art Evening Sale

16 February 2012 London

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Provenance

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Rudolf Stingel

5

Rudolf Stingel

Untitled

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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16 February 2012
London